"Where Are They Now?"

Like I'm sure many people in our class did for this week, I've been watching Netflix's reality dating experiment Love is Blind. I'm not yet done - no spoilers, please! - but what has struck me most about the show is the news that it wrapped filming in October 2018. I'm fascinated by the expanded and truncated temporalities of reality television editing, how a series filmed over a number of days can air over a number of weeks or, in this case, how a series might only go to air nearly 18 months after completion, effectively "silencing" its cast members over social media, causing them to readjust their own experienced temporalities to that of the watching public.

Beyond the speculation around how the show successfully kept filming a "secret" over such a long period of time, I'm equally interested in the "Where Are They Now?" coda as a classic trope of many reality series. Watching something like 90 Day Fiancé, often the reveal of whether couples have remained together is as juicy as the prelude to their impending marriages. Social media certain offers the affordance of an expanded televisual universe for fans and contestants of programs, as we've seen with the ongoing popularity and engagement of the stars of something like Cheer (indeed, there's something to be said for the particular brand of reality being engineered by Netflix). I suppose what interests me here, then, are the fluid temporalities offered by these different public-facing spaces for engagement with shows. What does it mean to watch Love is Blind, a document from over a year ago, while interacting with contestants on Twitter or Instagram in the present?

Additionally, for those interested in "Where Are They Now?" as formal televisual genre in and of itself, I recommend highly the edition for Bravo's inimitable 2012 series Gallery Girls. Released in 2015 by Bravo themselves, all of the information featured has been speculatively culled from social media or other sources, revealing a clear unwillingness with its stars to collaborate with the network three years after it aired. It's kind of engrossing. And do watch Gallery Girls.